Category Archives: A journalist’s self-promotion

I f*cked up at work. Not devastatingly. Not enough to have serious repercussions on my life or my job (I hope!) I’m not going to share what I did, not because I’m ashamed, but because this is the internet and I don’t want to make a bad situation worse. But needless to say, I wrote something which royally pissed off a very respected client and source.

I think it’s great that at journalism school we’re taught about what we can’t broadcast, what we shouldn’t write, who we shouldn’t quote. It’s great that we graduate knowing exactly what happened in the case studies that make up our legal yesses and epic nos. But it doesn’t change the fact that when you’re working, there will come a time when you will read what you have written and either say “NO” and hit that delete button, or say “F*CK IT” and hit send/press print/open your mouth and start reading. Sometimes it pays off to take a gamble, and sometimes it doesn’t.

I felt terrible about the mistake I made this week, until I talked to some of my colleagues, and remembered stories I had been told by past colleagues and journalist friends. Then it got me thinking… A true, respectable career in journalism seems not so much pitted by these f*ck ups as paved by them. I’m not saying it’s good to repeatedly piss people off and alienate important clients, listeners, viewers, readers; but there’s an undeniable glint of pride which creeps into a seasoned journalist’s eye when they tell you about the time they had to take out an affidavit to ensure their back was covered with a slightly dubious source, or how relieved they subsequently were when their byline was dropped from the finished article.

I may not be willing to share the latest f*ck up of my progressing career as a journalist, but there are other stories. Seasoned readers of this blog will know of postal-worker-gate. That was probably the earliest… Then there was the time I wrote about a drugs bust, quoting (rather too heavily as it turned out) from the objecting onlookers rather than the police presence. A week later I was summoned up to the station for a ‘friendly chat’ with the chief inspector and sergeant. Terrifying. There were countless misquotes surrounding village shops and local committees. I recall popping into a farmers’ market, introducing myself to one of the stall-holders and then getting a rather stern telling-off from a member of the WI for some long-published discrepancy about coffee mornings or jam jars or something.

Then there were the emails. The lovely, sterile typefaces forming caustic judgements on your ability to listen, to recount, to talk, to tell… to write. I was told I ‘lowered the tone of the Gazette’ because in a reply email – yes, EMAIL, not published article – I used the word gotten. (I resisted the urge to point out my occasional lapse into this so-called ‘abhorrent Americanism’ was not in fact due to the influence of modern television on my language choices but the fact I’d had, until very recently, an American father) I’ve been told – sometimes nicely and sometimes not so – I’m not very bright. I’ve been told I’m a horrible writer.

There are other stories. The worst stories – the ones where there is no gleam in your eye or belly-rippling giggle under your words – are those mistakes that hit you like a punch in the gut. The blade gripped in your hand, cleaving an insouciant tattoo into your own back as you press send.

In July 2009 two teenagers and a nine-year-old boy died in a car crash in my reporting patch. I covered the story for the paper.A week later one of the victim’s family members came to see me in tears because of an implication taken from my recounting of the events. An implication that their boy had not been acting responsibly. When I realised what I’d done to them, the bottom dropped out of my world. It was a level of shitty feeling equal to finding out my dad had cancer. You don’t hear so many of those stories, but they are there, behind the tobacco stains and the fatty livers, lying at the root of what makes journalism a crappy job.

But, on balance, it’s those gleams and those stories – those indignant phone calls, impossibly stupid decisions made in those squeezingly-urgent moments of deadline – that makes the job balance out. Because, when it pays off, those f*ck ups can make you.

“Adele wrote 21 when she was in the depths of break-up despair and a little bit fat. She’s now happy, in love and getting fit… Her next album won’t be half as good.”

If I’ve overheard it once, I’ve overheard it a million times. And not just about Adele and the beautifully melancholic whine-fest which I can only listen to if I reeeeeeeeally want to that is 21. I don’t remember a time I didn’t know because it was constantly drummed into me that tragedy is easier to write than comedy. Is it because the world is sick with cynicism? I learned at the age of 15 in a very poorly-executed GCSE Speaking and Listening presentation that you can’t, for love, money, or the desperate pitch of an eraser at an over-achiever’s head, MAKE an audience laugh. So why is it so easy to make them cry? Or, should I be asking, why is it so easy to make them want to cry?

As a journalist I have always found the most popular stories – whether that’s measured by website hits, comment, or even ye olde letters to the editor – are negative. Always. And I don’t have to link to a pyscho-babble article in the Guardian to say why: People love tragedy because it makes them feel better about their own lives. It’s why EastEnders is still going after nearly 30 years, it’s why the glossies and the red tops are always searching for that one in 10 billion shot which’ll make Cheryl Cole look fat and why that story probably got more hits than any government budget updates over the past 5 years combined. And it’s probably the reason why Someone Like You, in all its wailing glory, was the best-selling UK single of 2011.

Today I found out that my last post, that heartfelt, yowling whine from one of the most teeth-pullingly frustrating times of my life was one of the deciding factors in my current employers offering me a job. A job which I love and which has given me everything I so wanted for so long. There’s a lot to be said for tragedy.

So forget grief a second. (And the running… my legs are on hiatus) Here I am, four months post last exam, every day I basically do the job of a broadcast journalist at a very nice, local radio station. But I’m not paid, I have no written agreements and I can’t afford to move out of my mum’s house. It’s a strange and unnatural state, this unemployment. And I’ve come to view my own experiences in five phases – not so much the stepping-stone progression stages like the Grief journey, more like a haphazard cycling of which lottery ball is going to spurt out of Lancelot today…

1. Determinedly Blind Optimism.

Symptoms:

Innocuous thrill at the send of CV, Cover Letter and demo to job adverts

Belief of Smug Employed (S.E.) words of encouragement (incl: ‘The right job is out there, I KNOW IT’ Of course you do, you’ve bloody got it.)

Refusal to accept that that well-known media group really did make you spend hundreds of pounds getting your butt up to London for an interview on TWO DAYS notice, PLUS overnight stay, PLUS awful cold of the sandpaper-throat, dripping face variety just to Not Bloody Bother Contacting You Despite Follow-up Nag for three weeks and counting thereafter.

2. Anger of the Face-Mutilation Persuasion

This comes courtesy of a former classmate of mine, whose frustration about the well-meaning encouragement of S. E.s (see above) she likened to wanting to stab said S. E.s in their eyes.

Mainly when you’re unemployed you spend a lot of time alone with your anger. This can lead to it turning inwards, which is, let’s face it, not an unreasonable direction for it to choose. After all, most of the people you went to school/university/old job/university again with have great jobs now, what’s wrong with you? To avoid this turning into Phase Number 3, I would revert back to Number 1. Or at least direct anger at the Philistines mentioned in 1.3

3. Oh Dear Misery and/or Depression of the Much Woe Is Me variety

One can only take so much rejection after application stage before one begins wondering whether it was something one wrote. And conclude one is a terrible writer with no business calling themselves a journalist. Add alcohol.

One can only take so much rejection after the face-to-face interview stage before one starts wondering if it was something one said, unwittingly inferred or, in my recent case, facially leaked. And conclude one is a social miscreant with no business calling oneself a broadcast journalist. Add alcohol. Add chocolate.

Age can be an issue at this stage I think. Especially if you’re a 24-year-old Work Experience Girl constantly being asked what you want to do when you’re…er… finished. Ok, it could be worse. I turn 25 in 2 months.

Living at home = major exacerbation of this stage. Especially when your hairdresser, age 20, tells you she’s been living in her own flat since she was 16.

Alcohol makes much better… then much, much worse. Unless it is a Friday, then all the S.E.s become your lovely friends again.

In the past four months I have done some semi-serious research into how one would become a: pilot, policewoman, fire-fighter, paramedic, archeologist, author, paid blog-writer, army officer, priest (if you count googling How To Pray during one dark depth of Number 3)

In the past four months I have taken steps to launch my new career path in:

5. Utter, Humiliating Desperation

See above for example of Google search provoked by such.

This stage can lead to those fateful additions to your Cover Letter which tip you over the edge – beware any sentence bearing the words ‘I know the job description says I need to be a qualified …. but….’ Also to be avoided is the classic: ‘Salary expectations? Well, to be honest, I will work for anything.’ Can lead to the fielding of some rather awkward questions.

Unfortunately this phase can also lend itself to Self Sabotage, and not in the Meredith Grey sense of the phrase. This one applies to interviews. You can find yourself gabbling on and on and on about how paranoid local people can be about their post offices closing while your inner voice is saying Dear God Shut Up He Only Asked You How You Got Here This Morning.

I should perhaps, given my current situation, offer a cautionary about the words ‘I’ll work for free’ but to be honest, I’m not going to rant about the work I’m doing because I DO love it and it’s not the money thing that drags me through these phases over and over and over again. It’s the ego thing. And that’s one thing my CV could definitely do without.

So there you have it, my Unemploydenialment Cycle of Me. Learn from it if you will. And if you’re lucky enough to have a job you love, well good for you. Just wear sunglasses the next time you take your poor unemployed friend to lunch.

The purpose of my niche blog Day One was to explore the storytelling of news, and ultimately try to discover a new way of communicating news stories online, both creatively and journalistically. I aimed to compliment the more ambivalent nature of Insert Future Here with at least one answer to the blog’s opening question, Where is Journalism Going? I think this was a very ambitious goal to set myself, but I do think that ultimately, the direction of the blog has stayed true to its origins.

It was always my intention to interweave creatively-presented journalism with a serial piece of creative writing. As a former newspaper reporter with a creative writing degree, I felt this was a strong ‘niche’ topic for me. What is more, people seemed genuinely interesting in the idea when I pitched it to them.

I launched the blog with a piece of creative writing, which was somewhat ambiguous in nature as I purposefully did not explain in a blog post (only in the About Me page) what I was doing or why. I wanted the post to set a tone of creativity which would remain a consistent thread throughout the blog’s life.

Day One was not only about experimenting with the storytelling of journalism, it developed into a social experiment on a larger scale. As the hits began to pick up around December time, I decided to branch into more socially contentious subjects to see whether their SEO strength would affect my site statistics and comments.

One of my most recent posts was a reflection on the diet industry of today and how it is handled in the media. This post received around 20 hits within 24 hours of going live, as well as two comments. These were judged by WordPress to be spam as neither were particularly constructive and one was downright abusive about some of the personal information I had put into the post. I had decided to include this information as a means of engaging readers, in the style of the bloggers I had sourced for research, but in light of the response I see this was perhaps a bit naive.

One of the best examples from Day One of my exploring different and creative means of newsgathering was my Story from an Iphone post. I had covered the Cathays Sex Attacks story already for a CJS assessment, and wanted to experiment by very roughly putting the bare bones of the storyline onto some footage shot on my iphone. I think the result showed an interesting interpretation of a news story, but the post did not gain as many hits or comments as I would have liked.

In my niche strategy I mentioned that I would attend and review creative events in and around Cardiff as a means of ‘supporting my community.’ I didn’t want to just write a review, as I have done in previous blogs, I wanted to communicate these events differently. As a result, I began building a Google map showing some of the alternative places to go and things to do in the city for people interested in exploring the creative side of life. Cardiff, A Little bit Differently proved very popular as soon as it was published, and it continues to bring in hits as I update the information on it. This was my blog’s most successful attempt at supporting my community through a creative method.

My most popular posts on Day One as well as Insert Future Here (my course blog) dealt with contentious subjects such as domestic abuse, binge drinking, the diet industry and the role of social media in journalism. This was not only good for my blogs, it proved my point in terms of social experimentation – that posts about subjects that people care (and therefore search) most for will get more hits.

My most popular post for Insert Future Here was my Capture Cardiff post, which continues to gain hits daily (currently 121). I think this is a mixture of good SEO tags and categories, good sources and topical subject. The post which I am including in the links below, however, is my very first one discussing Claire Wardle’s lecture to CJS students. This gained the most comments out of all my posts, which I think shows that good use of links, a concise point and a good story to tell are the essentials needed for interactive blog traffic.

My Day One post with the most hits (88) was my most recent, Tutors could be putting Students at Risk. The content exactly reflects the headline, there is a link to more information, and a Soundcloud upload of an audio interview cementing the story’s validity. As well as being a genuine piece of original journalism, the story is topical, contentious and relevant to my audience.

I considered experimenting with social media differently to tell this story, but I judged that using the bare minimum of tools and letting Rebekah’s interview speak for itself would be the most creative approach ultimately. On reflection, this approach clearly engaged readers as the post got 68 hits within a few hours of publication, and continues to gain popularity.

I did comment on some of the blogs and sites listed in my niche strategy, which in turn probably earned me a few more hits. But I wasn’t as active with this as I had hoped to be – mainly because I found that I was not getting comments on my blog in reply. This is something I will try to improve.

I did not post as often as I would have liked. The complicated nature of my strategy meant that I became a bit perfectionist about my posts, I wanted each one to really earn its creativity. I do plan to continue the blog though, as I would like to see its following increase, develop my strategy of creative journalism as well as the serial piece of creative writing. This – which tells the story of a family struck by cancer – was originally intended to be a piece of fiction, but has turned autobiographical.

I liked the idea of drawing readers to the blog with the creative journalism posts and then giving them a flavour of something completely different which they would, hopefully, then want to read more about. This following is something I will continue to build on in order to gain a fledgling place in the niche of creative writing blogging.

How do you measure the success of a piece of online journalism? By hits? What’s the point of that if people aren’t reading the article? By comments? Not according to Nick Robinson. By the amount of people willing to pay for the content? Well, that’s a work in progress.

According to Joanna Geary, communitites and web development editor for The Times, it is the collaborative stories which rock the boat. The ones that people come together to rant/rave/dissect… The ones that everyone has read. So what stops journalists posting sensationalist stories just to generate more hits? Who is to say that Andrew Marr didn’t make his comment about pimpled bloggers just to generate attention?

I came across this anti-twitter article by Janet Street Porter on the Mail Online site this week, in which she claims the social media site ‘confuses activity with content.’ From the perspective that Twitter rates trends and tweets by hits, I see what she means. But as Joanna Geary pointed out during her guest lecture at CJS, one of the best ways to generate traffic and comments is an anti-blogging/twitter article. So, you could argue that Ms Street-Porter is, whether intentionally or not, practising the very traffic-generating tools she condemns. After all, the article has generated more than double the number of comments than her last despite being in the public domain for half the time.

This was just one of the points made by BBC Technology Correspondent and blogger extraordinaire Rory Cellan-Jones at CJS this afternoon. He was very upfront about the fact that TV reporting is generally considered by most as a ‘higher’ form of journalism than online journalism. But he also made the refreshing point that having total control of one’s platform reconnects the journalist with the fundamentals of the trade.

ie:

Yesterday a colleague and I were sent onto the streets of Cardiff with an audio device, handheld video recorder and our smartphones to source a story. We interviewed a sound tech guy helping to set up the city’s Christmas Lights Switch-on event and a UWIC student dressed as a time machine.

I found that rather than focussing on good questions to elicit interesting responses, I was fiddling about trying to get the audio device near enough to the interviewees’ mouths while desperately trying not to decapitate them from shot. I think this really proves Mr Cellan-Jones’ point. Given the broadcasting platform of the interviews, I was more concerned with the mechanics of recording material rather than content.

He also pointed out the difficulty of getting a piece of journalism on air at all, citing his Spinvox story as an example. Without blogging, and the audience he has built up online, this would never have been publicised because the content is so specialist. Yet it was a huge story with massive repercussions for the technology community.

Mr Cellan-Jones conceded that TV journalism will for the moment always reach more people than a blog post. (Particularly the BBC’s News at 10 and The Today Programme) TV is showing journalists what the audience rates in news stories – audio and videos which are exclusive and which are complimentary to the story.

Can blogging emulate this? If journalists continue to build their online reputation, draw in more followers and ultimately begin to receive the crucial images/videos sent in by members of the public… Why the hell not?

Ending this post with a link to a video about Citizen Journalism vs Traditional Journalism which I came across when researching for this post. It’s a little out of date now and a bit long but I think some of its points are still relevant. Plus, I realised about 10 seconds into my first viewing of it that one of its creators is a guy I met in Australia a couple of months ago… Small world…